A display refresh rate refers to the number of times an image is re-displayed, or “refreshed” on a display in a given amount of time. A refresh rate is typically expressed in hertz (Hz), thus a refresh rate of 75 means the image is refreshed 75 times in a second, and so on. Unfortunately, each time a display must be refreshed, additional power is required. For instance, additional power may be required to fetch data from memory, drive pixels out of an interface, refresh each pixel of the display, etc.
Various systems have been developed for dynamically adjusting a display refresh rate to provide power savings. Such dynamic adjustment may be carried out as a function of various aspects of the display of content (e.g. the content itself, etc.). For instance, the display of a simple word processor application may change very little from frame to frame, whereas a video clip may change dramatically from frame to frame. To this end, various prior art systems have adjusted the refresh rate to a minimum rate needed to accommodate such frame to frame changes. In the example above, the system may, for instance, only need a refresh rate of 40 Hz while using the word processor application, but need a refresh rate of 60 Hz while viewing the video clip.
To date, however, the aforementioned systems have been limited to refresh rate adjustment based on software aspects of the associated system. There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.